Carpets & Clusters

In the view of the imaginative school authorities at Greeley, Colo., conventional schoolhouses are square. So Greeley, in what is perhaps the most recent radical transformation of a school district's plant, has built four new schoolhouses that are circular or hexagonal. Moreover, they have no windows, and one of them has carpets on all the floors. "We know that a good teacher and a good blackboard are the fundamentals of teaching," says Leslie K. Grimes, school superintendent in Greeley. "But we also think that the good teacher can do better in a comfortable, air-conditioned room without noise and glare."

The Sherwood Hilton. Schoolmen from all over the U.S., visiting Greeley this fall to learn and imitate, see two schools that are round, with wedge-shaped classrooms surrounding cores of service rooms; another that is a cluster of three hexagons with cable-hung, sprayed concrete roofs; and a fourth--Sherwood school--that consists of four adjoining circular structures all containing V-shaped classrooms, plus an equal-size domed play area with infrared heating for cold days. Sherwood school is thickly carpeted in a beige, all-wool "acoustical floor covering." Parents call it the Sherwood Hilton, but Grimes is quick to tell them that the $21,000 cost of the carpeting is worth it.* Pupils relax informally on the floor. Teachers kick off their shoes. A music class proceeds without the distractions of noisily scraping chairs.

Inside, as in Greeley's other easily expandable new elementary schools, walls move to allow team teaching, small or large classes, special groupings within the classroom. The absence of windows prevents glare and helps preserve constant temperatures, and no one has yet complained of claustrophobia. Kathryn Moss, a teacher for 24 years, is enthusiastic. "I have the children to myself without window distractions," she says. "I'm convinced I'm going to teach better here because I can do so much more."

Nondimensional Space. That was precisely the idea when Greeley set about building schools that look like wheels and circus tents. With help from Colorado State College planners and experts at the Ford Foundation's venturesome Educational Facilities Laboratory, Architect John Shaver designed buildings "that stay out of the way of teachers and students."

Shaver, who is also busily at work on other new schools in nine states, says, "We want to make space nondimensional." In the process, he has given Greeley a new dimension of its own.

*Carpeting is one of the cushiest innovations in new school design. Since Peter Pan elementary school in Andrews, Texas, was carpeted in 1956, some 500 schools have joined the growing trend.

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